Nutritional Therapy
by cmr2014
Summary: When Vash eats a few too many donuts, Meryl decides he needs a new diet.


DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro Nightow.

**Nutritional Therapy**

Vash the Stampede had enjoyed the thrill of the hunt immensely, and now it was time to savor the taste of his prey.

"How do I love thee," he said between bites of the last jelly donut in the house. "Let me count the ways."

He was just licking his fingers when Meryl Stryfe came through the kitchen door. She saw the empty plate with its flakes of glaze and a glob of jelly. Saw the perpetrator attempting to remove the tasty evidence from his fingers. Accusing finger sprang up and centered squarely on his face, a range finder giving the all-clear for her verbal assault.

"You ate the last donut! Of two separate dozen-donut boxes! That I just bought this morning! We haven't even had dinner yet! What if I had planned to cook a large meal? How are you going to fit a large meal into your stomach with twenty-four donuts already residing? Are you trying to kill yourself? Don't you think that many donuts is carrying it too far? Well? Don't you have anything to say for yourself, you glutton?"

He tried valiantly to defend himself against her onslaught. "Um…I love you?"

Meryl was having none of it. "Never mind the Humanoid Typhoon, they should call you the Humanoid Donut!" Stormed out of the kitchen.

He poked his head out of the kitchen. "What _are_ we having for dinner?" Ducked back in just in time to avoid the pen she threw at him.

"I'm going out to eat," she hollered. "You've already had your meal."

No dinner? She wouldn't dare!

She did dare. He heard their motorcycle, the only transportation they had, fire up and head toward town.

Fine! He was the mighty Vash the Stampede. He needed no woman to cook for him. He would cook his own damn dinner, let her eat out tonight. Opened the refrigerator, only to find it bare. Checked the pantry and found it needed restocking, too. Well, damn. There must be something to eat around here. Sure, he had eaten two dozen donuts in the course of a day, but it was dinner time!

Aha! There was a little food to put in his belly – a little scrap of cheese. It was not much, but a man had to have _something_ for dinner. He reached in for the cheese –

_SNAP!_

– and pulled his hand back with a sharp howl of pain, a mousetrap dangling from it. Removed the stupid trap and shook his hand, thankful he was wearing gloves. That probably spared him any real harm. He looked in to locate the scrap of cheese once more, only to find a mouse scurrying away with it through a getaway hole, leaving behind a squeak of what sounded suspiciously like mousy laughter.

Oh, well. If he could not have food for dinner, it would have to be a liquid meal. The refrigerator might have had no food, but it _did_ have beer.

One six-pack of a meal later, Meryl still not having returned, he went to bed. If she wanted to wreak havoc upon his life by enjoying a meal while he starved, so be it. There would be no waiting up for her!

The next morning dawned bright through the windows, bright enough to register through his closed eyelids. He kept them closed just long enough to spend a few seconds meditating on life and love. A yawn escaped as he opened his eyes. A second yawn followed as he climbed out of bed and began stretching. Several subsequent yawns followed, each a little smaller, as his body woke up. Ten minutes after first coming to consciousness, he was awake and stepping into the shower.

He came into the living room, showered and fully dressed and ready for the day. Meryl was sitting on a large pillow on the living room floor, nursing a cup of coffee and poring over several books laid out in front of her.

"Good morning!" Vash announced cheerfully. New day, new start, leave yesterday behind you.

Meryl looked up. "We need to talk."

Crap. So much for leaving yesterday behind you.

He sat down cross-legged by her. "Yes?"

"I'm concerned about your nutrition."

Scratched the back of his head. "No need to be. I'm still solid." Slapped his flat stomach to prove his point.

"It's not the outside that worries me," Meryl stated. "It's what's going on _inside_ you that is of concern. With all the time you've been alive and your horrible eating habits, your organs are probably surrounded by fat. I shudder to think what your arteries must look like, and your heart must be working triple-time just to compensate. Vash, I love you, but you could be one bad meal away from a coronary!"

A groan sounded from deep within him. "You're going to _give_ me a coronary with this nonsense! I'm a plant, for crying out loud, what makes you think my system works like a human's?"

"And what makes you think it doesn't?" Poked him in the chest. "No research exists that we know of to tell us definitively whether your system works like a human's. You're enough like humans to be treated by doctors. Furthermore, if you're going to play the plants-are-different-than-humans card, what are we doing trying to have children?"

"Would you accept a smartass answer?" He wilted under her ensuing glare. "All right, all right! I'll at least hear what you have to say."

"Well, for one, you should be concerned about the amount of donuts you eat. You ate twenty-four donuts yesterday – your blood sugar must have spiked up as high as your hair! I won't even comment on the empty calories the six-pack you clearly drank must have dumped into you.

"The bottom line is, you need to start eating healthier. Take in less calories and more nutrients."

Vash snorted. "Ha! I'd like to see you make me!"

Meryl's grin was not quite evil, but certainly indicated she was ready for his challenge. "I don't have to _make_ you do it, you're going to do it of your own volition. Because no potential father of my children is going to risk an early grave from bad eating choices; you can either straighten up and work with me on this, or we'll stop trying for kids. And you know what that means."

He paled, the color draining from his face like water going down a funnel. "No more play time?" he squeaked.

Meryl's nod confirmed it – no more procreational fun. His move.

"Fine. Have it your way." Arms crossed, Vash sounded more like a five-year-old threatened with a time-out than a grown man.

"I always do," Meryl said cheerily. And thus began Vash's great diet experiment, wherein Meryl tried to find the perfect diet for her husband.

"Don't think of it as a diet," she told him. "Think of it more as nutritional therapy."

First she produced a book entitled _The Protein Diet: Avoid Evil Carbohydrates_. At first, Vash thought it sounded great – the easiest way to get protein was by eating meat, and he loved a good steak. But when he was ready to have his giant steak, Meryl brought him baked chicken.

"It's not even fried!" he complained.

"Of course not!" Meryl shot back. "Do you know how unhealthy fried things are? Eat your chicken. And stop trying to put the broccoli in the trash when you think I can't see you!"

At the end of a week, even with all the meat and jerky and vegetables Meryl had been shoving down him, Vash was dying for something with sugar in it.

Next, Meryl showed him a book called _The Carbohydrate Diet: Avoid Evil Protein_. Visions of donuts danced in his head, but it was not to be. This diet focused almost exclusively on whole-grain carbohydrates.

After a week of oatmeal for breakfast and quinoa for lunch and spaghetti for dinner (without meatballs!), Vash put his foot down and declared this diet was not for him.

Next was something called _The Plant Diet_. He rebelled immediately, as this brought about images of eating his brothers and sisters.

"It's not like that," Meryl assured him. "The emphasis is on vegetables and fruits and salad, trust me."

"Every time you say 'trust me', I wind up on some horrible diet," Vash complained. But he did it anyway. There were many vegetable plates, and fruit salads, and juices, and smoothies – so much that it felt like he was turning green. And he was never full – it felt like he had to eat all day just to get enough food in him to meet his basal requirements, let alone anything extra.

Finally, when Meryl wanted to try something called _The Thomas Diet: Get Healthy By Eating What Thomases Eat_, Vash declared an end to the "nutritional therapy".

"I'm not doing this anymore!"

"You have to!" Meryl directed. "It's for your own good!"

"That's been the basis for every dictator in human history!"

"I'll prove it to you! We're going to the doctor to get you examined."

"We are not!"

But Meryl had a plan. Willing to go just that little bit further than Vash, she marched him into the doctor's office at the end of a derringer.

"I knew it," her husband grumbled. "First it's 'it's for your own good', then you're being marched at gunpoint."

"Stop comparing me to a dictator," Meryl dictated. "This _is_ for your own good."

Before he could respond, they were summoned back into the office, Vash sulking the whole way.

"Now, if you'll get undressed," the doctor said, "we'll proceed with the examination. I have a nurse waiting to escort your wife to a separate room for her examination."

"Oh, but I don't need –"

"Ah, ah, Meryl," Vash cut in. "It's for your own good."

Her glare told him there would be an occasion for payback as she was escorted from the room, and he chuckled at his temporary revenge.

The examinations went as examinations go, and they both waited for their results.

"Well, sir, there's a few slightly elevated numbers here," the doctor said, "but nothing that shouts for concern. I'd recommend some slight tweaks to your overall diet – a little more lean meat, maybe a chicken salad for lunch, meat and a good portion of vegetables for dinner, a good mix of protein and carbs for breakfast, but overall, the only major recommendation I would make is cutting back on donuts."

"Ha!" Meryl exclaimed.

"So I think you're just fine," the doctor finished.

"Ha!" Vash exclaimed in response to Meryl's exclamation.

The doctor turned to Meryl. "As for the missus here – well, ma'am, congratulations!"

"I _knew_ it! I'm in better health than my husband."

"Actually, ma'am, your numbers are both pretty comparable. I was congratulating you because you're pregnant."

"_I'm what?!_"

The doctor chuckled. "I get that sort of response all the time. We can run the numbers again if you'd like, but the test came up positive."

Meryl squealed in delight; with this kind of happy news, there was nothing that could burst her bubble!

Nothing, that is, until she got home. Vash went out to the library and came home with an armload of books that he dumped on the table.

"Oh, no," Meryl groaned. "You wouldn't dare –"

"I would!" Vash grinned evilly. Began shoving books at her.

_The Pregnancy Diet_.

_How to Eat for Two (Or Three Or More)_.

_Pickles and Ice Cream – It's What's For Dinner_.

_The Beethoven Diet: Eating to Increase Your Baby's Intelligence_.

The list went on.

Meryl slumped her head in her hands. "It's going to be a long nine months!"


End file.
